We all know how formidable Facebook is, Â as a social media site capable of generating traffic to websites and in terms of userbase as well. Next to Facebook, we always think of Twitter. Â We never really thought about other sites, such as StumbleUpon perhaps? Now here’s an interesting statistics published by StatCounter covering the amount of traffic generated by social media sites that leads to website page views. The statistics cover Mar 2009 to Mar 2010. And guess what in 2009? Â StumbleUpon use to bring more traffic to websites than Facebook does.

From March 2009 to July 2009, StumbleUpon was actually the number one social media sites that drives the most traffic to websites. Overall, from Mar 09 to Mar 10, StumbleUpon was second to Facebook in generating traffic to websites with 25% of social media hits, while Facebook had 48%. Twitter had 10% of social media hits. Â The rest include – YouTube (6%), reddit (4%), Digg (2%) and MySpace (2%).

So, what’s the importance of these statistics? From a business perspective this only goes to show that social media sites could be a good tool for driving traffic to business sites. Hence, we now see more brands having their Facebook pages linked to their individual corporate websites.

Mr. Aodhan Cullen, CEO of Statcounter remarks:

â€œSocial Media market share fluctuates a lot more than browser or search statistics. For example, Facebook peaked over Christmas and the New Year with almost three quarters of the total, perhaps reflecting its important role in communications between families and friends.â€

In case you’re wondering StatCounter’s data was based on 13 billion page views across the globel StatCounter network of member sites.

So there, if your Â company does not have a social media presence yet, you might want to start creating one on Facebook, especially now that there are many things happening with Facebook in terms of features and functionality.

Not so long ago, it was rumored that Facebook Connect will be implemented on MySpace. That means, you can now login to your MySpace account via Facebook’s single sign on facility. And that also means that you can easily share your MySpace’s actvities on your Facebook account. Yes, that’s the advantage of using Facebook Connect.

But after that, the news just simply died down. We haven’t heard anything about it until now. It looks like the facility is being quietly rolled out. At least on MySpace Fan Video site. If you check it out right now, a box with “Connect with Facebook” option will be displayed. And clicking that will trigger the usual Facebook Connect process, that Â includes you logging in to the MySpace Fan Video site using your Facebook credentials.

It’s a pretty neat and simple integration process, that you wouldn’t think that it has no great impact to both sites. Actually it has. It will open up more opportunities for both MySpace and Facebook. Although we’re not really counting on a future merger. It’s a far-fetched idea. Â But this is a good start for the two rivals to start mutually operating in a harmonious manner. Bottomline of it all is that we, social networking users stand to benefit later on.

If you want to try this feature out, just visit MySpace Fan Video site, login with your Facebook profile, select videos from the available music videos of current popular artists and start sharing them with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Be honest, is your social networking and web 2.0 life already impacting your real life so much that maybe it’s time for you to consider killing it off? Apparently that was what SuicideMachine.org allows you to do.

SuicideMachine currently works with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn. The service it offers is so controversial that Facebook hits back and banned SuicideMachine’s IP Address, preventing what could possibly a massive suicide committed by its members.

I couldn’t blame Facebook from doing so. SuicideMachine is “so dangerous” in the sense that once you sign-up for it and allows it to delete your social networking profiles, it will forever ban you from joining those sites again. So, SuicideMachine is not really for those who are momentarily disgruntled by their social networking activities. Not for those who are just experiencing momentary social networking stress. Like they say, once you start the process on the Suicide Machine, you can’t stop it anymore.

And I would really think twice before signing up to SuicideMachine, after all, despite the procastination effect of Facebook and Twitter, I still find these social networking/web 2.0 services of pretty good use.

Committing web 2.0 suicide has never occured in my mind, at least not yet.

Spending too much time on Facebook? You’re not alone. A new study from Neilsen shows that Americans have tripled the time they spend on social networks and blogs. Even has-been MySpace is getting a lift from the rising tide. On average, you spent seventeen percent of your online time on social networks and blogs in August 2009, up from six percent the year before.

When it comes to online media, advertisers are often slow to go where the audience goes — but in this case, they’re definitely catching up. Advertisers increased their spending on social networks and blogs by a whopping 119%, up to $108 million in August 2009 from $49 million the year before.

Now you won’t feel so guilty about goofing off on Facebook. Even Madison Avenue’s starting to hang out there.

Vincenzo Cosenza released a World Map of Social Networks, detailing the dominance of social networks worldwide. Based on data available via Alexa and Google trends the map displays which social network is most present where in the world.

Some interesting things can be learned from the analysis. [Read more…]

MySpace announced the debut of a new original series and the siteâ€™s first online game show, â€œBFF.â€ The MySpace original program, which tests how well best friends know each other, is produced by Meryl Poster and David Rubin and sponsored by Ortho Womenâ€™s Health & Urology, Division of Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Each â€œBFFâ€ webisode will feature a pair of best friends who are challenged to answer questions about each other in several rounds. Based on the number of correct answers, prizes will be awarded at the end of each round.

The series, hosted by NBCâ€™s â€œLast Comic Standingâ€ finalist, Amy Schumer, will run through June 30. MySpace users in the U.S. will also have a chance to join in on the fun as contestants by submitting video entries on the â€œBFFâ€ MySpace page. Those selected will be flown to New York City for the taping of their show.

Also available on the â€œBFFâ€ MySpace page is an application allowing the MySpace community to create their own â€œBFFâ€ quizzes. Users will have the ability to customize quizzes by selecting questions from a list of categories. They will be able to send the quiz to friends to see how well their friends really know them.